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“Can’t believe how brave you are.” He kissed her forehead and she hooked a finger through the empty belt loop of his jeans.
“Can’t leave you.”
“But you were going to.”
He brushed hair off her face, curled his fingers around her ear. “Can’t deny I wanted out.”
“Are we not stronger than an argument?” She couldn’t do this again. She dropped her hand from his waist. If they fought and she said things she didn’t mean in anger she had to know he’d go toe to toe with her, wasn’t going to pack a bag and leave.
“Ah fuck, Cinta.” He stroked her upper arm with the flat of his palm, smoothing down to her elbow. She lifted her hand and they clasped. She read only distress in his expression and it occurred again she was asking too much of him.
“You’re focused and tenacious about everything else in your life. Don’t give up on you and me. Not yet, please not yet.”
He reached for her other hand and she gave it into his grip. He rested his forehead on hers. It wasn’t the crushing hug she craved, but he was still here. She lifted her chin to prompt a kiss and he went with it, his lips soft on hers, tentative in a way not even their first kisses had been. Her hands went to his hips and he didn’t break away. He touched her cheek, her chin, the edges of her ears, her throat with the tenderest kisses, light like bright butterfly wings. He was silent and steady, the movement of his hands caressing her back and neck, made to take the place of words.
He would stay, he would forgive, he would try. It would have to be enough not to hear confirmed what his body was saying.
He took her to bed, after a bath, after a grocery run and a mushroom omelette. Neither of them was hungry but he insisted she eat. Between the sheets he touched her with gentleness bordering on reverence, intensely alert to her, watchful and remote. Uncharacteristically silent in the one place his tongue was unguarded. It broke her in a new way, his reticence to talk, to hold her, grip on to her, move her as he willed.
“You can’t hurt me, Mace. Not here.” He slicked kisses down her body, giving her his touch but not his thoughts. “Please talk to me.” He settled between her legs, nudging her knee aside. He was going to hide his feelings in the sex. She struggled upright and tried to push him back. He looked up and his expression was so filled with sorrow it burned. She shoved him, slapped her hands on his chest and pushed, wanting to knock his distrust out.
“Don’t shut down on me. Don’t you dare lock me out. Don’t make this into something it’s not. If you’re going to leave me, do it because I’m a spoilt princess, not because you think I’m too weak to take your touch.” She glared at him and he gave her nothing. She moved to the edge of the bed and stood up; she didn’t know what to do next, if he left, if he stayed.
“Get back in this bed.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. He lay on his stomach, he hadn’t shifted. “Why?”
“Get back in our bed.”
The changed description mattered, but not enough. “I worked hard to get over Brent. You’re making me feel like I’m too weak, too frail for you. I was not a victim then. Don’t make me one now.”
He rolled over and sat up cross-legged, the sheet bunched in one hand. “I need you to come back to bed. I need it to be different.” He lifted his face and her whole body stung from the look in his eyes. “I nearly left you tonight because I can be a fucking hothead.” He ground his fist down into the bed. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”
She could see it, regret poured out of him, it bunched the muscles in his abdomen; it lifted his shoulders and darkened his eyes.
“I might’ve left you because you were upset and hating the world and you had a right to, and I couldn’t see straight. All I heard was you rejecting me and that’s not what you were doing. I nearly left you over nothing. Because yeah, we’re stronger than some shouting and breaking things. And I’m not going anywhere. I think you’re incredible. I love you and I need you.”
She stood at the end of the bed facing him. He was so intense he changed the temperature of the room, made her body hot and cold and shivering through both climates.
“But tonight I need you differently. You are all I can see, all I can think about. All I want to feel, and I came so fucking close to fucking it up. Don’t ask me to be the same with you tonight, because I can’t do it. Get back in this bed, Cinta and let me love you the best way I can.”
She got back in the bed and he loved her so carefully, so deeply, with hesitant reverence in his hands, with quaking obsession in his words, that he redefined their togetherness.
29: Penalties
Lunch with Aaron Turnbull wasn’t exactly a job interview, but it was the kind of networking you did when you needed a job interview to manifest itself out of thin air. And thin air had been in plentiful supply when Aaron called with an invitation. He’d want something, that’s for sure. Jacinta had to hope what he wanted was also useful to her, because she’d had to knock back lunch with Carmen and Ingrid and that would’ve been far more interesting. No, not interesting, it would’ve been a straight up serve of no hidden agenda, no posturing, no power play, fun.
She gave Aaron a smile. Let the posturing begin.
“Unemployment looks good on you, Jac.”
He leaned forward, invaded her personal space and kissed both her cheeks, holding on to her upper arm a touch too long for someone she’d not spoken to in recent memory. She tried not to scowl at either the comment or the overfamiliarity, but the short form of her name made her cringe. He hadn’t earned that. How would he like it if she called him Ron?
“Why has it been so long since I’ve seen you?”
Ron would’ve been busy with two ex-wives and four kids since they’d been MBA classmates. He was busy now checking out her legs. “Dumb question. Busy.”
He laughed, followed it with a shrug. “I always knew I could call you up in two years or ten and you
